THROUGH THE BACK DOORS OF BELGIUM
another year as "king"
of Ghent's crossbow
men; and forthwith
his name was in
scribed in a parch
ment tome which con
tains the names of the
guild's successive
kings from 1500 to
1924. It was a popu
lar victory, for the
winner's family had
lived at Ghent since
1400oo, or almost since
the founding of the
guild, which is first re
ferred to in the city
records under date of
1314.
Weekly archery
tournaments are com
mon throughout Flan
ders. Brussels is the
singe or seat of the
14th-century L o n g
bow Guild. And the
tall, wooden towers
which one sees in the
countryside around
Mons are indoor
ranges in which the
targets consist
of
stuffed birds dangling
from the ceiling.
Regretfully we re
loaded the Nageoima
and twisted our way
Photograph by (evaert
FRANS HALS WOULD HAVE DELIGHTED IN TillS ILl'MIS1I
in and out of many
towered Ghent to the
great double locks which hold back the
tidal Scheldt. Here lay numbers of steam
barges, awaiting the ebb hour, and we
locked through with a dozen of them, the
Nagcomna looking like a minnow among
a school of whales.
DASIING TOWARD THE SEA TIIROUGH
INKY DARKNESS
Mile by mile we drifted, rather than
paddled, towards Antwerp, while peri
odically some red-roofed village, with its
tall stacks, lifted above the green plain.
For, no matter how sparsely settled may
be the countryside, a Belgian hamlet al
most invariably shows its factory chim
ney. Indeed, it characterizes the land-
FISHER TYPE
scape of this highly industrialized people.
Toward sunset my friend brought out
his ukulele and serenaded the Scheldt
with jazz; and the skipper of a passing
steam tug, the Rosalie, actually slowed
down his engines to listen to "Poppa
Loves Momma."
We fell into conversa
tion, and he said warningly:
"You'd better look out. The tide's
turning, and there isn't an anchorage for
another eight miles."
Having no wish to be caught after
dark on a flood tide, we hitched behind
the Rosalie and were towed to an an
chorage at Termonde (see page 515).
Indeed, we gladly accepted a further sug
gestion from the skipper, who planned to
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